Doug Hutchinson (Collaborative Colloquia: Hellenic Studies)

Those Crazy Philosophers: Attribution of P.Oxy.3659 to Aristotle’s lost dialogue Protrepticus

Discussion led by Doug Hutchinson (Professor of Philosophy, U-Toronto)

“… If even the whiteness of silver ends up being uncertain, why marvel when deliberating people disagree about war and peace, alliances and revenues and payments and the like? And what about the philosophers themselves? If you confined them in a single house and the same number of madmen in a neighboring house, you would get far, far greater howls from the philosophers than from the madmen! In fact, this one, this Antisthenes here, says he would rather feel madness than pleasure; and Aristippus, what ... is mad ... and what about Plato ...” (Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 3659, lines 9–31)